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So much potential, but too many bugs to reach it.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: January 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

With as much hype as there was for this game, I was really looking forward to it and I had such high hopes for Crysis. However, I should have known that because the very first thing I encountered after the installation was a bug, that I was going to find the game to be frustrating in the end.

Bugs are very often related to the vast array of hardware and software that make up our computers, so your experience may be different, but here are the specifications of the system I'm playing on so that there is a basis for comparison. I have a 2.4 GHz quad core CPU from Intel, the Q6600. My video card is the NVIDIA 8800 GT with 512 MB of video memory. I have 8 GB of RAM and I'm running Vista 64, so that I can use all of it.

On the initial load, the game chose 1024x768, which is quite different from my 1920x1200 desktop and apparently the makers of the game, Crytek, never considered this possibility, because I couldn't use the mouse to select any of the menu items; the origin of the screen and the origin of the mouse were different. This meant, that in order to click on a button my mouse pointer was somewhere off the lower right of my screen. This was not a good sign and didn't instill a good first impression. I ended up having to change my desktop to 1024x768 in order to click on any of the buttons on the main menu screen. (I retested this after patch 1.1 was released and it is still a problem, which shocked me, because when I first encountered the bug a quick search of the web revealed that I wasn't alone.)

The first two-thirds of the game are fairly fun, though nowhere near as intense, non-stop, or varied as Call of Duty 4. Although, the more open, less linear aspects of the early levels, give the player many opportunities to explore, I failed a couple of missions because I didn't realize that there were time constraints for success. Towards the middle of the game, there is a very linear, zero-gravity, level that is a bit boring, very confusing, and adds little to the game. After this level is where the really annoying bugs begin.

After the zero-g level, another marine has modified for his personal use, one of the alien's weapons. Aside from being nearly ineffectual, the sound produced by this gun introduced a new bug, where all of my speakers started popping and a distorted version of the alien gun sounds would continue without end, even making it impossible to understand what the characters said. Turn on subtitles so you can work through these sorts of bugs. In the same scene, there were some graphical bugs where the aliens legs would stick to one part of the world while the rest of the alien continued on its way to some other part of the world, leave stretched, blue alien parts across my screen. This continued even after installing the patch.

In the last level, on the aircraft carrier, the game really heads south. For the entire game, I'd been playing at 1920x1200, with no antialiasing, and all of the advanced settings on medium. These settings were unplayable on the aircraft carrier. Perhaps Crytek ran out of time to optimize the performance of this level. In my view, they should have delayed the release. This is not really helped by the patch, either.

The next bug involves saving and loading the game. In the early levels, loading a level for the first time would take less than 30 seconds and loading or saving a game that was in progress was nearly instantaneous. However, during the Reckoning level, these actions would take several minutes. I actually used the task manager to kill the game several times when this first started, because the automatic load after death took so long I was sure the game had frozen, but no, this was just how long it took. This was not fixed by patch 1.1. At this point, I'm beginning to wonder what the patch was for.

The final encounter of the game takes place on the aircraft carrier's deck, which due to even more bugs, is not solid. I must have fallen through the "solid" surface to the rooms below or into the ocean a couple of dozen times. This was annoying enough, bug combined with the several minute load times make this last part of the game, not worth playing. I stuck it out to the end and finished the boss, at which point the game says "checkpoint reached" and promptly hangs. Since the game normally automatically saves after a check point, I left my screen frozen there for 20 minutes before giving up and killing the process. As you might have guessed by now, this was not fixed by the patch.

Of course, since it hadn't saved my game, I got to do the final encounter again, but after falling through the deck several more times, I decided that it just wasn't worth the aggravation.

With all of the games out there, I find it impossible to recommend Crysis due to its many, many bugs.

Exceptional inovation

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is the best I have ever played. This game is to me what Half-Life 2 (HL2) was to me 3 years ago. The physics engine of HL2 brought a grand sense of imersion that had me grinning ear to ear the whole time I played. That's how I feel when I play Crysis. The very large destructable environments give me a sense of freedom I have never felt in a game. It's not just the graphics, the game really inovates by allowing the player to choose his/her own path to resolution.

Recent FPS games (Bioshock, Halo 3, HL2 Episode 2, and Portal) have been great, but I feel constrained by them, there is always one or two blocked paths that open up miracusly after you defeat the current group of enemies. With Crysis, I feel like I can play the way I want, I can play stealthy, or I can go in guns a blazing! It's neat that when I die, and have to repeat an area, I find myself doing totally diferent things, atacking from a different point, or sneaking by the enemies unseen. Some people probably think this makes the game too easy, but I personally LOVE the fact that I can snipe alot, you can attach the sniper scope to a regular rifle, so you don't only have 5 bits of sniper ammo. Of course there is a dedicated sniper rifle (with little ammo), but I prefer to use my ordinary rifle with lots of ammo:) THANKS for the CHOICE!!! I love you Crytek!

There are some bugs in the game. I saw some guys run into the water and drown. I had a problem where I couldn't get rid of an empty rocket launcher. So yes, there are problems, but I'm glad to be playing the game now. If this stuff bothers you, just wait 6 months for all the bugs to be patched and for the video hardware to catch up before you buy. If it was a Valve game, it probably would have been delayed for another year. Instead, I'm overjoyed to play it now, and I will surly be playing it later.

My system:

Windows XP
1 GB RAM
Intel Core 2 E6600 OC'd @ 3.4 Ghz
ATI X1900 XT 256 Mb
Kolance water cooler w/ waterblocks on CPU and GPU

I run in medium/high settings with no framerate problems except the first ~30 seconds after loading.

Update,
I added 2Gb of RAM (total of 3Gb) and I can play on high settings @ 1280 x 1024. Also, the RAM fixed that super annoying inital load problem. Now, I need to download the hack to play Ultra settings with Windows XP:)

If you're not sure how this game will run on your PC, then download the demo before you buy! Easy-peezzy.

More than good looks

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

With all the hype around Crysis' great graphics, I was expecting a mediocre FPS with stunning visuals. I was presented with much, much more.

The gameplay is very malleable, which accords players the freedom to play Crysis like Splinter Cell/Hitman, or like Quake 3. The levels are spacious enough so that the player isn't forced to confront enemies head on. You can easily sneak past enemies and subsequently pick them off, or avoid engaging them entirely.

The destructible environment also contributes to the unique experience of Crysis by adding a great degree of dynamism to combat. Falling trees, exploding vehicles, collapsing houses, etc. are all tactical factors to consider while playing Crysis, and forces the player to be alert to more threats than just enemy fire. For instance there were times I thought I could find secure cover in a small house from a circling helicopter, only to be crushed by the roof after the helicopter opened fire on the house.

Crysis' story isn't anything groundbreaking, but is entertaining, and if you allow yourself to be immersed into the game (which isn't hard) I think you will find it very enjoyable. The way the story is narrated borrows strongly from Half-Life, in that it sticks with the perspective of the player.

All in all, Crysis is much more than the sum of its parts. There is something inexplicably epic about this game, that is more than just having all the right features of an FPS.

My system:
AMD X2 4000+ @ 2.73ghz
2gb ddr2 @ 800mhz
evga 8800gt 512mb ssc
24" Dell 2007wfp-hc 1920x1200
fps: with dx10 hack i get 10-40 fps, with standard dx9 i get 25-30 consistently.

Good game, terrible distribution

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This product installs securom malware without asking the user just like Bioshock. The graphics would be amazing if you could have a GPU from the future but with the same graphics card, Bioshock looked awesome while Crysis left a lot to be wished for. The single player is very short which makes it very similar to Call of Duty games. The multi-player "Power Struggle" is very nice but as with other previous MP games, it is easy for some players to dominate the game.

Definately buy the game but don't expect a lot.

A decent FPS that doesn't re-invent the wheel, and will be fun if you have the horsepower

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Crysis is the unofficial sequel to Crytek's first game, Far Cry (the rights to the Far Cry name has been purchased by Ubisoft, and Far Cry 2 is in development, without the input of the Crytek team). In short, like Far Cry before it, Crysis is a graphically intensive first person shooter (FPS) that takes place almost entirely on a jungle-covered island. If you have a serious computer--the latest and the greatest hardware, in other words--and you enjoy FPS games, you will probably enjoy this game...but it is not, to be sure, the best FPS ever, or even the best FPS of the year.

The main drawn of--and simultaneously the central problem with--Crysis is the graphics. And, to be sure, with a high end machine the game is very pretty; the explosion effects, vehicles, and the character models are particularly impressive looking, as are some of the environmental effects (fern leaves move as you push your way through the undergrowth, small trees can be shot down and fall down with convincing physics, etc). The water, on DirectX 10, is very realistic, as are the light rays moving through the trees from the sun. But all this comes at a very hefty cost, and even on a very nice PC the framerate will tank, especially when running the game on Vista with DirectX 10. In fact, running the game on DirectX 9 is the smart thing to do: it will run much better, and doesn't look that much worse.

All that said, there are games that came out this year that look almost as good as Crysis (and in some regards may look better) and run much, much better. Bioshock and Call of Duty 4 immediately come to mind. In fact, a couple people with little knowledge of video games have seen me play Crysis and Call of Duty 4 back to back and decided that Call of Duty 4, not Crysis, looked more impressive.

Okay, enough about Crysis's graphics. What about the gameplay? Crysis is, in a few ways, revolutionary, but for the most part it is a run of the mill first person shooter. The revolutionary elements come in the form of the nanosuit your avatar wears, which gives you four different operating modes to choose from--enhanced armor (the default), enhanced strength, enhanced speed, and cloaking. The suit has energy stores that deplete in varying amounts depending on which mode you use (it recharges when you don't use anything, or when you have enhanced armor on and aren't getting shot). All this combines to make for a interesting new gameplay mechanic, where you can play however you want to play: running in gunning everything down, throw bad guys through walls, snipe them from a distance, sneak up and cut them down, etc.

In addition to the nanosuit, you can modify (slightly) all the weapons you find, putting on laser pointers, sniper scopes, grenade launchers, etc. Along with the nanosuit, this modification of weaponry allows for some additional "strategy", for want of a better term, for your play, but really you'll just end up putting on laser pointers, silencers, and scopes on every weapon you find.

Apart from the nanosuit, weapon mods, and graphics/physics, the rest of Crysis is pretty much a run of the mill shooter. The first 2/3 of the game is actually fairly open and fun, allowing you to play as you want and gives you a compelling feeling of being a dangerous, super-powered Predator-like figure hunting down your North Korean enemies. The enemy and friendly AI is passable (nothing special, but not terrible either). The environment, in the jungle, allows you multiple options to get to your next objective. The story is conveyed through radio broadcasts to your rarely-speaking avatar and through in game cut scenes that take control away from the player but keep the perspective in first person (a blend of Half Life's story telling conventions and more traditional cut scenes).

However, the game takes a turn about 2/3 through and becomes highly linear, removing essentially all of the choices regarding how you want to play that made the first portion of the game stand out. And the ending...well, if you played and hated Halo 2's ending, you'll hate this one too, which combines a completely out of place "boss" battle straight out of a 90's Contra game with a complete cliff hanger of a finish that positively screams sequel.

All in all, Crysis is a good, but not great game. Some elements are fun, others less so. The weapons range from fantastic (the sniper rifle) to blah (some of the assault rifles). The graphics are great, but not so good as to warrant the extreme system requirements, especially given other graphically impressive games that have come out this year.

Essentially, Crysis doesn't quite live up to the hype that has been building for it for the past couple years. It's a decent evolution of Far Cry...but it is not a revolution of the FPS genre. In my eyes Bioshock and Call of Duty 4 are both superior FPS games on the PC for this year. But if you have the horsepower to run the game and enjoy FPS, you'll probably find Crysis a decent, if, unremarkable, experience.

I'll stick with FarCry

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 19
Date: December 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

When you do something right, and then later do something wrong, it demands comparison, and requires criticism.

I love FarCry. It was for me near FPS perfection. For many, it had it's weaknesses, but I have played it through sooo many times, maybe too many. I definitely got my money's worth. Many of us love the FPS "duke nukem" style one against the impossible to beat invasion by "whatever" scenario.

So with such a challenging success in Far Cry, we were really looking forward to Crysis, but with this new one Crytek falls down hard. The big picture planning (plot) was great, but the top dogs should have followed through with the details. Minor examples: all of the voiced parts were weak; the video glitches were extreme; play style was inconsistent and too variable, and the end of the game is downright boooooooring. You finish with a "who cares" attitude.

The download-demo makes you think your getting FarCry "plus". Yea!!! But then with the one you pay for, the plot goes goofy and somebody begins to make this thing into their very poorly scripted "video project". With FarCry you have control over the action; with Crysis you're manipulated at the most inopportune times and to the nth degree and therefore feel depressingly bored. About two thirds of the way through I stopped liking what I was doing, and began feeling like I was playing something by/for girlie-men. So I guess subjectively, the last half of Crysis seemed pointless; in fact, objectively this phase is a huge step ... backward in time ... it reminded me of those old quarter eating "tetris?" video machine games we played in bars in the 70's, now it's just in 3d.

Oh and for you parents who are "real" parents, be warned: The language wasn't feminine: it is ridiculously foul and pointlessly so ... don't even think of allowing your teen to play this with the sound on.

So disappointing! After the first half, it was a huge waste of my time and I'm sure it will be - of your money too. So come-on Crytek, get your act together!

Aweome game! CPU/GPU killer!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: November 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Well, to start off, I shouldn't have purchased Crysis yet. My system is okay, I have a Duo Core processor and a Nvidia 7800gtx so I have to run the game on low settings. I feel like I'm ruining a great game running it on my current set-up. I recommend waiting for the 9000 series GPU to come out in a couple months, because even with the high end 8800 ultras, you can't get the very high settings. The gameplay is awesome, the combat is action packed and the powers are fun to use! I highly recommend this game if your computer has the stones for it. If not, wait until you upgrade.

Follow up game to Far Cry (finally!)

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 15
Date: December 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Hi all! If you've ever read some of my other reviews, you know I'm a hard core action, adventure, FPS type of gamer. I loved Far Cry and have been waiting patiently (and I'm not a patient man) for a sequel. Well, this is it. Yep! I got the demo and it looks every bit as good as Far Cry. The thing that is really cool about Far Cry AND this game, is that you can interact with the entire environment, you can take your own path throughout the game and you can just plain have fun. You actually feel like you're IN the game. The graphics, as in Far Cry, are excellent and the environments are realistic and a blast to play in. You can shoot down all the palm trees you want, shoot the buildings to pieces and have a general blast playing psycho killer. No, I haven't purchased the game yet. I plan to though. This one is worth every cent, just as Far Cry was. I highly recommend this game to all those fellow FPS fans out there. You won't go wrong with this one. Now, make another and another. Love these games!

Quit crying because your system is too frackin' wimpy to handle the game! IT'S AWESOME!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: December 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Let me first start by saying all you frackin' cry babies complaining because your system can't handle it need to shut the frack up and back away from the vehicle. This game is awesome, and the fact that it will be graphically scalable for the next few generations of Graphics is a GOOD THING, similar to FarCry and how it was at it's release time with the 5900Ultra.

If your system can't handle it on settings that're good, it REALLY DOES NOT LOOK THAT BAD ON LOW FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

I am not going to spoil the game but I will say it is HIGHLY recommended by me. The gameplay is not only graphically gorgeous, if set correctly, it is perfectly playable on any system. I have tested it with a single 8800Ultra, dual 8800Ultras, an HD2900XT and dual 7800GTXs, and was able to find very playable settings on all four setups. I will list my full system specs at the end of the review.

From the start it is very brilliant in terms of plot, gameplay and graphics. I myself prefer the hardest difficulty, cuz being able to understand the Koreans talking actually makes it less fun in my opinion, because you can hear them yelling grenade... what's the fun in knowing a grenade's coming? LOL

The suit modes and weapons modifications are also VERY cool, I myself modified the suit modes file to allow more flexible gameplay. I love how mod-able the game is, I even set it up so that I'm running the DX9 version of Very High Settings on some of my settings.

Overall I give this game a full 5 stars as I have played through it at least 6 times now and it has not lost it's fun. Here are the settings I use, and my system specs:

Resolution: 1680x1050 (Full Screen)
Anti-Aliasing: 2x

Texture Quality: Medium
Object Quality: Medium
Shadow Quality: Medium
Physics Quality: High (modded to Very High in the Config File)
Shader Quality: Custom (Forced by the game when AA is enabled, hopefully patch #1 will fix that)
Volumetric Effects Quality: Medium
Game Effects Quality: Medium
Post Processing Quality: Medium
Particles Quality: High (modded to Very High in Config File)
Water Quality: High (modded to Very High in Config File)
Sound Quality: High (modded to Very High in Config File)

VSync Forced On in NVidia Control Panel. Ran the benchmark at these settings: 29FPS Minimum, 42FPS Average, 59FPS Maximum

On these settings, it looks absolutely stunning. My specs:

Meet Elizabeth QX

QX6850 @ 3.666Ghz (1.5Vs) under a DangerDen TDX775 Liquid Block cooled by MCT-40 Coolant and a 360mm DangerDen Black Ice XtremeIII Radiator with 1/2" tubing (35C idle, 57C load with the 5 120mm fans on the radiator on low/quiet mode)
EVGA 680i SLI A1 Motherboard
2x 2GB Mushkin DDR2-8500 (no longer made, very rare) @ 889MHz @ 5-4-4-12-2T @ 2.1Vs
2x EVGA 8800Ultras (one Superclocked, one stock model) @ 612Core/1080Mem (for now as I just got the second card, the stock one)
Creative X-Fi Fata1ty Champion Series Edition Sound Card W/Front Ports
HP External DVD Burner w/LightScribe
CoolerMaster Stacker 832 Case
FSP Fortron Everest 1010 Watt PSU
Lasko HVB as a side fan to keep the motherboard and cards happy
Dell 24" Widescreen Flat Panel LCD Monitor
Logitech Z5300 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System
Sony MDR-V700 Headphones
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyborad
Logitech G5 Laser Mouse

If you have a system less than that, don't expect to be able to run the game on high... ever. lol I can run it on all high settings with no AA, but I prefer the 2x AA as it makes it easier to snipe.

Anywho, thus concludes my review, quit crying, it's an awesome game, good job Crytek, get that darn patch out to make it support SLI better so I can really get good #s with VSync on. :-D

First Impression-installation issue solve

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: January 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought Crysis as an XMAS gift to myself after reading the reviews. This is the second game in a row that I've had installation issues with. It took me a couple of hours to figure it out but, for the benefit of others who have this issue-here is the solution.

My computer would not install Crysis. Kept getting 'vcredist' not found error. If this happens, go to Microsft downloads and download the Eindows clean-up utility. Run that and remove the C++ redistributale program that is in the programs list shown by the clean-up tool. Then return to Microsoft and get the 2008 C++ Redistributable file, install it and then Crysis will install for you.

I was a big Far Cry fan and the games start out in similar fashion. I have A Core Duo II 3600, 2 GB of DDR Ram and a 8900 GTS card. The game runs well.

The interface is more complicated than Far Cry because there are more options available. The high-tech nano-suit has built in features that require some learning. The graphics, thus far, are great.

The game has been generally well-reviewed. If it approaches Far Cry, I will be happy.

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